Acid Shadows
by Elemnestra Aethelflaeda
Summary: Ancient tech was valuable. But SG-8  and their plus one  hadn't expected the natives of P4X-182 to be quite so possessive. Clone-fic.
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing that anyone recognises.**_

**A/N: Spoilers for _Fragile Balance_, again. **

* * *

_**Acid Shadows**_

_**Part One**_

General Landry sat and stared rather blankly at nothing in particular, gathering his thoughts and trying hard not to look quite as blind-sided as he felt by the news Walter had just given him. News Walter had whispered to him, in fact, in the confines of his office while the four members of SG-8 waited in the briefing room for their orders. He wasn't quite as blind-sided as he felt he would be justified in being, after – hell, how long had it been now? – commanding the base hidden beneath Cheyenne Mountain, but nevertheless, this was Hank sinking to new levels of incredulity. He thought privately, most of the time, that he was coping with the job, with the command, with this new life; this was clearly only when he wasn't convinced that he was on the verge of having a complete mental breakdown.

The root of this newest problem, of course, was alien technology. Alien technology appeared to be the prime cause for most of Hank's problems in life, in fact. Unfortunately. This wasn't to say that it couldn't be beneficial – but life would sure be a heck of a lot easier if it wasn't around. It would be less interesting, though. If by "less interesting" you meant "less dangerous" or "less likely-to-blow-up-in-your-face-at-any-given-moment", anyway.

In this particular instance, the alien technology messing up Hank's life was of Ancient origin. And therefore held to be – as with every bit of Ancient technology ever found, during Hank's time at the SGC and previous – possibly containing the secrets of the universe, and potentially incredibly important. Held to be so by SG-8's linguist, anyway, as SG-8 was currently – although who knew how long that state of affairs would last, given the extraordinary grapevine in this place – the only team to know of its existence.

But while the artefact currently inhabiting P4X-182 was undoubtedly wonderfully interesting to those interested in such things, and could even be interesting to Hank once he had it explained to him, there was a bit of a sticking point involved in the process of finding the artefact's purpose. Dr Rob Cochrane, the aforementioned linguist, had repeatedly insisted that the team needed someone with the ATA gene to further the research, and any hopes of finding what the device was meant to do. Lyons, Richards, and Chapman – the military contingent of the team, being a major, captain, and a lieutenant respectively – had been no more eager than had Cochrane to let anyone else have a go at what they considered to be their technology.

And with everything in the galaxy heating up, and seemingly everyone out to get the Tau'ri, anything Ancient that could do Earth some good was on the priority list these days. Especially when such a device was on a planet with natives willing to let an SG team study the technology.

Unfortunately, the ATA gene was in short supply at the SGC, what with the majority of those possessing it having been shipped to Atlantis. In fact, of those currently on Earth and not the other side of the galaxy, let alone another galaxy altogether, the sole person Hank could think of _with_ the gene was General O'Neill. And O'Neill was irretrievably entangled in paperwork and interminable meetings, unable to go offworld whether he wanted to or not. Even generals have superiors, and orders, and information they didn't have the clearance to know.

And that thought brought him onwards towards the news Walter had just given him. There was, in fact, unbeknownst to Hank previously, a carrier of the ATA gene not only on Earth, but far closer than Washington D.C. and General O'Neill. And not only that, but the person in question had a gene as strong as that of the General's, and lived, last the SGC had heard, in the state of Colorado itself. As such, all well and good; actually, better and better.

There was just one small thing that Hank had a problem with; the identity of said ATA gene-bearer: a young – in appearance, at least – man going by the name of Jack O'Neill. Last known whereabouts: attending high school somewhere in Denver.

Of course, there was still the problem of actually convincing the aforementioned ATA-gene-bearer to help, once they found him. Why would O'Neill feel as though he owes them anything? For all intents and purposes, they – even if Hank hadn't been a part of "they" at that point – had just discarded him, a tool no longer useful, and then forgot him until he was needed. Surely they couldn't just rely on his sense of duty, could they? And besides, this was Jack O'Neill they were talking about. If anyone could hold a grudge, it was him.

With this startling – though no less welcome – news of potential help in mind, with all its accompanying positive and negative factors, Hank dismissed SG-8, telling them merely that the matter of finding someone with the ATA gene to accompany them to P4X-182 was in hand. And Hank then turned to Walter, who – as per usual – pre-empted his request by saying that he would contact the teenager's school immediately. Some days Hank really wondered if that man wasn't a psychic. Or at the very least a reincarnation of Radar O'Reilly.

* * *

'Uh, General, sir?'

Walter's voice came from a position roughly three feet in front of General Landry's desk. It was a fact that Hank discovered when he looked up and found his aide standing there, having somehow appeared there without making any sound whatsoever.

'Walter?'

Hank could have said more, but he was sure Walter would get the drift. He always did, anyway.

'There's been a bit of a problem.'

Hank dreaded to think what the elaboration on that statement might prove to reveal. Hopefully nothing quite like the _last_ time...actually, nothing could be quite like that, surely. Maybe. He didn't say anything – if I pretend it's not there, maybe it'll go away – but just waited for Walter to continue.

'We haven't been able to locate Jack O'Neill. He's missing.'

For a second, Hank's thoughts flew to General O'Neill in Washington DC, wondering firstly why they had been trying to locate him, and secondly why he hadn't known earlier. Then his brain kicked in, and he realised _which_ Jack O'Neill it was that Walter was talking about, leaving him glad he hadn't verbalised those initial thoughts he'd had. And _then_ Hank wondered why on Earth Walter couldn't find O'Neill. He was only a teenager, wasn't he? How hard could it be?

Then he thought, no, it was _never_ that easy. Anything related to the SGC immediately became strange and disconcerting, so why should this be any different?

'He's not at that high school?'

'No,' Walter confirmed. 'And, actually, I'm not sure if he ever went. I haven't been able to find him in any other school's records, either.'

Hank sighed, loudly, ignoring the fact it was in front of Walter and Generals probably shouldn't show stuff like annoyance and resignation to their subordinates.

But, hell, wasn't this _just like_ Jack O'Neill?

* * *

So for all their intentions of leaving important Pentagon meetings undisturbed, Stargate Command ended up disturbing them anyway. Of course, General O'Neill didn't seem all that displeased.

The important Pentagon meetings had probably been boring Pentagon meetings.

Leaving the General's non-existent possible displeasure aside, he hadn't seemed at all surprised by the news of his clone's disappearance, either. But then, if anyone would know what the clone had been doing, it would be General O'Neill. Hank wasn't too surprised when, whilst on the phone to Jack, the latter told him not to worry about not being able to find the apparent-teen.

Hank also expected that, at least in part, Jack's assurances that he'd find the errant clone and hand-deliver him to the SGC to prevent further disappearances were – presumably successful – attempts to weasel his way out of further imminent boring Pentagon meetings.

On the other hand, it was pretty much a given that if the clone didn't want to be found, then General O'Neill would likely be the only one who would be able to find him. After all, they were basically the same person, weren't they?

* * *

True to his word, General O'Neill had hand-delivered his clone to the SGC a week after Hank had phoned him. Neither of them had mentioned exactly where the clone had been that the Air Force had been entirely unable to locate him.

Hank didn't ask.

Hank also hadn't searched for records of the clone's existence. Possibly that was wrong, not finding all available information on someone that no one really knew anything about, or where he had been since parting ways with Stargate Command. He justified his decision with the reasoning that such a background check would undeniably be an invasion of privacy, one that Jack didn't deserve (whichever one it was he was checking up on, neither deserved it, he was sure).

Hank didn't tell himself that he just didn't want to know if the records still existed. He didn't want to know if they had been wiped, and if they had, who exactly by. And whether they existed or not, Hank didn't think he really wanted to know what was contained in them.

He suspected that he had enough nightmares to be going around.

* * *

Jack – either version – hasn't so far told Hank that the clone will be helping out with the, ah, situation. Hank's looking on the bright side, here, trying out that new optimism thing people have been talking about. He doesn't think that Jack – either version – would bother to turn up just to rub Hank's nose in the fact that he wouldn't be getting any help.

Well. He _hopes_ Jack hasn't turned up just to be annoying and sarcastic like that, anyway. Because, well, you never quite know, with O'Neill. And coming to supply help would doubtless entail bountiful annoyance and sarcasm regardless, so _that_ part of the deal at least was probably a moot point. Hank doesn't know why the clone would be willing to help out. If he had to make a guess, though, then he would estimate that it had something to do with the lure of another trip off-world, even if it only rubbed in the clone's face all that he no longer had.

The apparently siren call of the stargate, steadily overruling the teen's common sense.

But then, Hank had never really managed to understand why all members of his SG teams were so enamoured with what lay beyond that gate. There was more than enough unpredictable action during Hank's day merely remaining ensconced within the confines of the base. No, everyone at the SGC was insane to some degree, and those with a position on an SG team more so than most. Of course, Hank wouldn't really dream of having it any other way.

And either way, insane personnel or not, Hank's not particularly looking forward to the experience of explaining to Major Lyons and his team just who, exactly, was their requisitioned ATA-gene-bearer for the mission. Unfortunately, it's probably not one of those things that he can get out of.

Then again, there's always the chance that the potentially slightly-humiliating occasion will be made more bearable by the presence of the teenager, whether intentionally or not. At least having the clone there would more readily convince SG-8 that he wasn't joking.

Small favours, yes?

**_to be continued..._**

* * *

**A/N: A word of warning - the next chapter contains violence, and has considerably more gore than does this chapter. For more detail, think about the name of this fic: _Acid_ Shadows. The rating won't change, but...uh, yeah. That's my obligatory warning.**

**- Elemnestra**


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing anyone recognises.**_

* * *

_**Acid Shadows**_

_**Part Two**_

Major Lyons wasn't sure where, if he had to pinpoint a specific moment in time, the mission had gone wrong. But gone wrong it undeniably had. The natives – far from the easy-going folk from the last time SG-8 had been on the planet – had somehow transformed into ravening, raging creatures out for his team's blood. Not literally, though that could possibly have been _less_ surprising. But the natives of P4X-182 had suddenly, for some reason beyond Lyons' comprehension, decided that SG-8 – with its one addition – was under no circumstances allowed to even view the Ancient device mounted in their local temple-fortress.

Maybe the mission had gone wrong about the time the elders wished to know why the team had returned, despite the fact Lyons had mentioned last time that they may be returning. Maybe it had been when it was discovered that there had been a "minor" political upheaval, only subtly alluded to, during the few days that SG-8 had been on Earth. And it had definitely gone wrong by the time the team were rounded up during their stroll down the main street, and the natives attempted to forcibly corral them into the castle.

By the time SG-8 resisted, with no intention of being forcibly corralled anywhere, and the natives drew weapons, the situation had definitely progressed beyond any repair. And when the team woke from unconsciousness, and found themselves chained to the walls of a large cell, there was quite clearly no immediate way out of the situation besides that which the natives decided.

* * *

Waking up, drifting out of the black hole of unconsciousness, every member of SG-8, whether permanent or temporary, had a headache. Whenever they moved, the thick metal chains attached to the arms and legs of each person clinked together, drawing immediate attention to the presence of the manacles locked securely around wrists and ankles. The strangely clear, transparent walls of their cell were the next thing to draw their attention; the walls and the bright light streaming through to hit their faces. Neither the light nor the noise of the chains helped with the headaches.

And there didn't look to be any getting out of either the chains or the cell. The guards standing directly on the other side of the door didn't look as though they'd be happy to let the prisoners escape, either. Those big, muscular guards that just couldn't compete in the immediate-attention-grabbing stakes with the headache pounding away within Lyons' head.

_Oh, this isn't looking good. Oh, dammit. Why does this stuff happen...?_

* * *

The five Tau'ri had been awake for what seemed a long time when they became aware of something happening – something happening beyond a slowly fading headache. The quiet conversation between the five – which, after touching on the current situation and all the ways that they could possibly think of to escape, none of which would help, passed on to all manner of pop culture trivia, being the least related subject that they could find on short notice – ceased when the two guards outside finally did something other than not move a single muscle while keeping an eye on the prisoners.

The pair of natives listened to someone – or more than one someone – probably deliberately standing out of sight of the prisoners. And then, responding to whatever orders they had just received, the guards opened the cell door, and entered the prisoners' domain.

SG-8, along with their addition, turned as one with a jingle of chains to face the guards as they came through the door. Even once the five had climbed to their feet, the better to be prepared for whatever came next, the natives still towered above them, both taller and bulkier. Captain Richards, manacled closest to the door and so also closest to the natives, shuffled her feet backwards, retreating a little, trying to keep her distance. But it didn't make any difference; maybe she had attracted their attention by moving, or maybe they had been planning to go after her all along.

Major Scott Lyons watched in dawning horror as, in slow-motion burnt into the back of his brain, the two big, burly natives forcibly stopped his 2IC's struggles. The pair stood on either side of Captain Diana Richards, holding her shoulders down, forcing her to kneel, and – ominously – holding her hands outstretched towards the middle of the room, palms facing upwards.

The chains holding her jingled faintly as she shifted her weight slightly, searching for a way to shift the weight of the two thugs who were practically standing on her. From Lyons' point of view, it seemed as though the pair of natives were far too experienced at restraining folks in this manner, almost as though the victims were supplicants.

And Lyons couldn't suppress the creeping – horrifying – thought that he might not be getting one of team back in one piece. If any of the team got back at all, including him and the teenager; this was beginning to look doubtful. He didn't know what the natives were planning, but it sure looked suspicious. And the Major couldn't see a way out of it just at the moment. _This is happening too fast...don't we even get a trial?_

Although, now, right at this moment, the situation seemed to be temporarily paused. On hold. Lyons frowned; he could hear something, just faintly.

Then, louder, he heard O'Neill say vehemently 'Crap.'

Lyons switched his focus from Richards to O'Neill, and, following his gaze, from the teenager to the clear walls of their prison. Or, more accurately, followed his gaze to the multitude of people that had gathered outside the walls, peering in.

Entertainment for the masses. He really should have guessed.

Lyons turned his head back to watch Richards again, only to be sidetracked by the entrance of an additional two people into their clear-walled prison. The appearance of the pair only heightened his paranoia; as did the sudden complete lack of sound, save for the jingling chains. The newcomers looked to be in charge, which could only be more bad news; chances were that whatever punishment was arranged would soon be beginning.

The taller of the two newcomers was male, wearing what seemed to be rather extreme amounts of whatever leather-substitute they had on this planet, and laden down with only a couple of visible hunting knives but undoubtedly a whole lot more weapons of the concealed variety. Lyons was sure he had seen the man somewhere at the back of the charge that had been led towards the – okay, the not entirely unsuspecting – SG team. That fact meant the man probably wasn't stupid enough to put himself into a position where chained prisoners could get the better of him; not if he was smart enough not to get himself cut down as an extra in the first few minutes of battle – no chivalric honour here.

The second newcomer, on the other hand, could easily have been either male or female, any way of telling being hidden beneath one of those long robe-and-hood things that shamans (or the local equivalent) seemed to favour on just about every planet in existence.

Either way, the let's-say-they're-a-shaman seemed to hold just as much power as the let's-call-him-the-leader did. And it was entirely possible, given that the shaman was accompanying the leader to the handing out of a (possibly – hopefully – mundane) punishment, that the shaman held more power than the leader did, in one of those not-easily-identifiable-ways that things always seemed to work offworld. Of course, that was unlikely to be of much use in any other than an academic manner. If knowing the flow of power could get them out of here, all the better, but the team were not likely to gain such a chance.

In this particular, spectacularly unwanted, chance to learn of the culture of those residing on P4X-182, the shaman-person appeared to be the keeper of the means of however whatever punishment they had unwittingly incurred was to be carried out. The shaman produced it, with some evident ceremony, from the depths of their robes, holding it carefully, as though with some inadvertent ill-advised movement it might shatter and destroy them all. Lyons fervently hoped that that wasn't actually the case.

The item in question was a small, delicate glass bottle, with swirling designs covering the sides; held inside the fragile vessel, filing it almost to the brim, was a dark liquid, pitch black in colour, that almost seemed to be moving of its own accord within the confines of its container. Lyons had no idea how exactly this mysterious, alien liquid would be used to carry out his team's punishment, let alone what that punishment would entail, but he had no doubts that that punishment was the purpose of the dark substance.

And, Lyons added to himself, when he saw how the leader moved slightly further away from the liquid once it was produced, it would probably be painful.

This was not looking good; SG-8 had been lucky to get home alive the previous – the _first_ – time a situation of this type had occurred. Fire-fights, sure, those the team could survive with relative ease; even just the typical taken-prisoner situations, or the risky-diplomatic-negotiations-in-another-language-with-added-threatening-weaponry situations; but not mysterious-dangerous-punishment situations.

His team were hardly SG-1 – and Lyons wouldn't want them to be in any case – and they didn't have that team's penchant for getting into – and more importantly out of – trouble.

* * *

Oh, god. And for all that Lyons had officially decided to become an atheist after finding out about the Goa'uld, sometimes the old-fashioned, ingrained curses were best. Jesus Christ in Heaven. And taking His name in vain was okay if you didn't really believe, right?

And Lyons' thoughts were all over the place, and he was rambling, and he knew that, because there were some things your mind just spontaneously takes action against, because your mind just does _not_ want to look at those things. Or remember them. Or think about, ever again, including right this very second.

Oh, _hell_. While in some cases calling on Him for assistance helped, Lyons himself had always – even when he actually _went_ to church – believed something more along the lines of "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition", and besides, hell seemed a touch more appropriate at this point in time. Given the circumstances.

And she was still struggling, still moving, still resisting, although her bloodcurdling, piercing screams had died down to whimpers and now even those were fading, unable to be sustained... And it was an awful sight, it really was, but he _had_ to watch, because anything less wouldn't be acceptable, wouldn't honour her – and he's already talking like she's dead, he notes in a far-off corner of his mind – and maybe no one would blame him for looking away, not even Diana – but _he_ would.

So he watched, no expression showing on his face, because really, what expression would do the situation – do her, and her sacrifice, however unwilling, and unneeded, and oh-god-how-did-this-go-wrong – justice? And Major Lyons kept watching his 2IC, with the sight burning – etching, with acid, just like-_shut up, shut up_ – eating its way into his mind. He kept watching, right up to the point when she stopped struggling, stopped moving, and the burly natives released her body, etched with acid from the inside, in patterns he might have even found amazing if not for where – _what_ – they were, and the chains holding her clinked as they held her dead weight.

Then he blinked, looked down, swallowed hard, and tried not to lose his last meal. However bad the mess hall food tasted going down, he was sure it would taste worse coming back up.

It was far from the first dead body he'd seen – he was career military, and hardly some raw recruit – and nor was Captain Richards the first soldier he'd seen die while under his command. But the Captain had died in torment – Lord Almighty, but she had – and now it appeared as though they all would. And Major Lyons really wasn't sure if he was up to it.

Although, with the natives already forcing Cochrane to his knees, it did not appear as though he – or any of them, he or Chapman or O'Neill – had much choice in the matter.

* * *

There was no real reason to the sequence, they looked like they were just going around in the order that the SG team had been chained to the walls. That lack of reason really only made it worse. _It's not personal._

But planned or not, it meant that Lyons would be last. It meant he would have to watch them all dying in agony (if he could bear it, if he didn't chicken out, if he could stand it), before doing so himself. Dammit, Landry was going to kill him. But that probably wasn't going to be much of a problem, was it?

* * *

The pair of native thugs were repeating their earlier movements, leaving the dead body of Lyons' teammate to lie in its chains while they moved onto the next live teammate – although in this case, the teammate in question was O'Neill, and Jack O'Neill – just like his namesake, it seemed – clearly had no intention of just simply submitting to his execution.

The teenager was instead slowly backing away from the advancing natives, which may have looked like cowardice to that pair of doubtful intelligence – although that assumption could just be the Major's subconscious stereotyping – but to Lyons it looked just like O'Neill was trying to get enough slack in the chains to make sure he'd actually be able to reach the natives without the chains stopping him, or at least not getting in his way overmuch.

Against two burly men, Lyons really didn't like the kid's chances, not in so many words, especially when the kid was chained to the wall, no matter how relatively loose those chains happened to be. And if Lyons hadn't liked watching this – this cold-blooded _process_ – happen to two of his team, he wasn't gonna like watching it happen to a teenager. Not one bit.

And it didn't help his conscience in any way at all, knowing that this kid had chosen to be here. It wasn't as though a teenager would have been able to make an informed decision about the whole going-off-world thing; it was a wonder, really, that the kid had been allowed into the SGC in the first place. Okay, so maybe Lyons was being a _little_ unjust calling him a kid. O'Neill would be – what? Seventeen? Eighteen, maybe? Old enough to already be in the military, anyway.

A green recruit, and there were enough of those going through the gate these days. The SGC ran through – ran out of – personnel like anything, and there seemed to be more and more new recruits, now, replacing those lost. There'd need to be a few more new recruits, after today..._No. Shut up. Shutup, shutup, shutupshutup._

O'Neill had his back to the wall, now, and sure enough, the two natives weren't looking at all as though they suspected any ulterior motive beyond purely instinctive movement to _get away_. It was possible, Lyons admitted to himself, that that was part of it, the hindbrain just screaming to get _out of reach_, because that would certainly have been a significant part of his own, similar, movements had he been approached by the natives at this moment.

The natives, within striking distance, had not paused in their mission to get the kid kneeling on the ground, and his hands forcibly held outstretched in that attitude of pseudo-supplication. The one on the left hadn't expected a foot to connect solidly with his knee, and the one on the right plainly hadn't expected, a few short moments later, to receive a fist in his stomach.

O'Neill, on the other hand, appeared annoyed but not unduly surprised (or surprised at all, an attitude that was a touch suspicious, and suggested previous exposure to the oddities of alien physiology) when the natives were barely affected by the blows. Lyons was fairly certain that, had the natives been simply human, then – well, that kneecap would almost certainly have been in a great deal of trouble, and the other guy would definitely needed to at least get his breath back.

As it was, they didn't need to recover (Lyons didn't like to think about just how alien the natives might be, to be so unaffected; "from a different planet" didn't quite cover this level of difference) and they didn't have kneecap problems. And they didn't pause in their undertaking to force O'Neill onto the ground.

If the natives had been human, Lyons found himself thinking as he watched, O'Neill might have even won (and he tried not to think about whether the captain might have been able to win, had she not been taken by surprise).

But they weren't human, and he didn't win.

* * *

Lyons had never enjoyed feeling helpless and this sort of complete helplessness was worse than might otherwise be considered normal. It wasn't being unable to translate an alien language without needing to go through Cochrane, it wasn't being unable to watch more than three minutes of '_Wormhole Xtreme!' _without collapsing in hysterics, it wasn't being unable to stomach the food served in the SGC's commissary.

This time, helplessness meant that someone was going to die. It meant that _another_ person was going to die, and he couldn't do a single damn thing about it.

This time, helplessness didn't mean annoyance and mild irritation, and it sure as hell didn't mean amusement. It meant that he had failed.

This time, being helpless meant having to watch as a teenager had acid – or something that may as well be acid – dripped slowly onto the insides of his wrists. It meant Lyons would have to watch excruciating pain, _again_, and _not be able to do anything_.

It also meant, apparently, watching the shifting expressions upon the faces of the natives as something happened that they had not predicted.

* * *

Lyons wasn't complaining that the obstructive natives of P4X-whatever didn't seem to have any clue what was going on. Even if he wasn't sure what _was_ happening himself, if the natives didn't know, then – well, surely it couldn't get much worse.

Except the expressions of the natives both inside and outside the clear-walled prison cell turned slowly from surprise to – was that fear? Awe? Lyons couldn't tell. He couldn't tell what was happening to the ceremony-or-whatever-it-was, but something had definitely gone wrong with the liquid's reaction to O'Neill. Or perhaps it was more O'Neill's reaction to the liquid.

Lyons shared a brief, panicky glance with Chapman. It was, of course, a _good_ thing that O'Neill wasn't screaming until his voice grew hoarse and looking as though the chains and grip of the native guards were the only things preventing him from writhing in pain – _stop thinking_ – but because he _wasn't_, Lyons wasn't sure what to think.

The kid wasn't having the same reaction as – _don't think about it, just shut up, don't say their names_. He was having _a _reaction, and Lyons didn't know what it was. It was painful, that much was obvious, even if O'Neill wasn't making much noise above the faintest of near-involuntary whimpers. Face a mask that wasn't quite managing to be emotionless, his lean frame all but vibrating with tension, O'Neill's agony emanated from him right along with the quiet sounds torn from the back of his throat.

And even if Lyons closed his eyes, he'd still be able to hear those noises, barely human, of a wounded animal in pain. He didn't close his eyes. He didn't think that Chapman did, either.

But for all that – _and wasn't that enough?_ – the liquid-whatever wasn't acting the same. Just from watching, Lyons knew that much. But the liquid wasn't burning him – it was hurting, it was painful, it was making black, rippling lines all up and along his arms, covering his hands in twisting dark shadows – but it wasn't etching its way into his skin, wasn't leaving his skin blistered and sore and burnt in its path. It wasn't melting his flesh to the bone. And for all its swirling and spiralling, it was progressing slowly, wasn't making its way through him like wildfire, feral and untameable.

It wasn't killing him.

And Lyons didn't know what to think about that.

* * *

The sight was morbid, and he couldn't tear his gaze away. More disturbingly, the one expression common to each and every inhabitant of the cell when Lyons mustered the presence of mind to look was that of varying degrees of shock.

The tall leather-substitute-wearing man appeared to be having second thoughts about just how long this coup of his would remain successful. Lyons was no expert on matters of religion, let alone alien religion, but this event would not look to be a good omen in terms of the man's deity-ordained right to rule. The will of the gods overturning a ceremonial killing ordered by the current leader? Lyons just hoped that the political mess would have the good manners to begin after it was no longer the problem of his team.

The natives restraining O'Neill looked uneasy. This new occurrence was no doubt a large shock to their minds of limited intellect. Lyons realised he was being nasty, and then admitted that he didn't much care.

The shaman-person's expression was impossible to read, their face being hidden as it was beneath traditional coverings. Their body language, on the other hand, was nearly as uneasy as that of everyone else.

The natives outside the cell seemed to be unsure as to whether they remained permitted to watch the events. The contrast between not being allowed to view a holy event, and being authorised witnesses of it? The gaining of a story to tell their grandchildren?

Lyons didn't know. He didn't particularly care either, although he suspected that O'Neill might prefer less people seeing this whatever-it-was-and-whatever-it-signified.

Lyons couldn't have said how long the inhabitants of the cell were frozen, caught in an instant and all watching O'Neill. But after some indefinable period of time, there was a change as O'Neill slumped and went still and quiet. Lyons' breath caught. Chapman made an involuntary-sounding noise in the back of his throat.

It was a second before Lyons realised that O'Neill was still breathing, his chest rising and falling slowly. But then, he had been somewhat distracted by other aspects of the unfolding scene. The distraction resulted specifically from the disconcerting fact that the black lines of the liquid still twisted over O'Neill's hands and arms. The black lines didn't make Lyons feel any better about what might happen next, but – on the bright side – no one was making any moves towards Chapman to force him to undergo the same treatment. In fact, the natives were still all a little subdued.

The shaman-person moved smoothly forwards, having stored the vial that Lyons never wanted to see again somewhere in their robes. They were the only person to move, and command of the situation seemed to fall to them almost by default as the only person to know what was happening.

The shaman-person spoke up, in that babble the natives called a language that was entirely incomprehensible to Lyons. In fact, the only thing he gathered from the rapid series of words spoken was that – given the tone and pitch of the voice – the shaman-person was in fact a witch-lady. Female. Lyons didn't see what sort of difference that made.

Cochrane would of course have been able to tell him what she was – Lyons cut that thought off. It didn't matter, in the end, because the actions of the natives broadcasted fairly clearly what the witch-lady had been telling them. The two large men that had been holding O'Neill down let him go and stepped away, with a look of what might have even been relief on their inexpressive faces.

A few sentences later, keys were produced from the garments of one of the interchangeable guards. Within the next minute, every single member of SG-8, including O'Neill, including Richards, including Cochrane, had been unlocked from the chains.

* * *

Explanations were due (and more than explanations, but what Lyons wanted was something the natives couldn't give, couldn't return). Explanations were more than due, and Lyons was going to get them, no matter who objected (and those objectors included him, because he really just wanted to _get drunk, now_).

But it didn't look as though Lyons was going to get those explanations. Or if he was, he was going to get them second-hand, and majorly delayed. The witch-lady had proven to understand and speak at least rudimentary English when she had politely escorted the Lyons, Chapman and O'Neill out of the prison. But no one else appeared to share the common language, or if they did they weren't telling. And the witch-lady had disappeared, dragging O'Neill off somewhere to talk to him about matters she implied, in her broken English, to be urgent.

Lyons hadn't been able to do anything to stop her, loathe as he was to have one of his team be taken from his sight. And for all he knew, she was right in saying there were urgent matters to discuss with O'Neill. For one thing, she presumably was one of the only people who might have an idea what that stuff had done to him. Shaman-witch-people being keepers of mystical secrets and all that.

So Lyons and Chapman slumped lethargically in the room that had been provided for them, picking at but not eating the food that had been produced. With something that might have been irony, the room was of better quality than the room they had been offered the last time they had visited this world. If it was an apology for their treatment it wasn't working.

For one thing, being ignored had not been on Lyons' to-do list. And the sum total of everything he had been able to weasel out of the natives about their abruptly-halted punishment was the phrase "_Dia'sangua_," or sometimes "_Daemon'sangua_." Of equally little help was the occasional rambling, babbling monologues upon which the natives sometimes embarked in their attempts to fulfil his request for information.

But armed with a lengthy period of time filled with absolutely nothing else to do, Lyons managed to guess what was being talked about. _Sangua_ was probably meant to be sanguine – a word coming from the Latin, from Ancient, meaning blood. He wasn't sure about _dia_, but _daemon_ probably meant exactly the word it sounded most like. Demon. The natives had been ritually punishing them for infringement of their laws using demon's blood.

And so when one of the intended victims survived, the occurrence had been automatically linked with the divine. And the will of the gods was never something to ignore, whatever the planet in question.

* * *

The natives were happy enough, after some requisite period of time had passed, to let the remaining three Tau'ri leave with all their belongings replaced and intact. The only possible exception to this overwhelming turnaround of emotion was the leather-clad leader whose name Lyons had yet to commit to memory; the man seemed to have elected to go with the flow anyway.

The natives even – at the suggestion of the witch-lady who had been closeted with O'Neill for what had felt to Lyons like hours, and indeed it probably had been that long – provided an escort to the gate. Upon learning that their visitors wished to take their dead with them, the native people had, after some discussion, produced stretchers from somewhere with which to transport the bodies.

The lone favour the natives had been reluctant to carry out was that of letting the team investigate the Ancient artefact they possessed, that had been the start of everything. In fact, the otherwise fairly amiable people – amiable except, apparently, for when they were ogling dying aliens – had downright refused them access. In any way whatsoever, no matter how many villagers accompanied them.

Lyons wasn't too annoyed. Finishing the mission was all well and good, doing the job his people had died for, yadda, yadda, yadda. No. He wouldn't enjoy explaining the loss of even potential alien – Ancient, at that – technology, but right at this moment, Lyons didn't care. He did _not_ want to spend any more time on this planet, any more time around these people, or _ever_ have to have _anything_ to do with them ever again. As it was he was having a hard time not taking extremely ill-advised vengeance for his team-mates.

The sooner he was away from here, the sooner he could – not forget, not that, but – the further away he was from this place, the better (_better_? He meant _easier to live with_, didn't he? Not better) the memories he would get, and the less likely it would be he would snap and attack someone.

Really, the natives kinda seemed to be in the habit of having village-wide mood-swings when it came to outsiders, and he didn't want to stick around long enough to see their temperament abruptly switch direction yet again. Sure, at the _moment_ they were being nice and friendly, playing escort, but Lyons couldn't help being a little paranoid.

Unfortunately, such paranoia seemed to be almost a part of the job description.

Once at the gate, however, the tanned, lean natives didn't hang around and undergo potentially dangerous mood-swings, just disappeared from view, heading home without delay. Save for the witch-lady – now Lyons had thought up the moniker, his brain wouldn't let it go – who stayed temporarily to talk to O'Neill about something, the SG-team's escort seemed to almost vanish into thin air, such was their need to be gone from the vicinity of the gate.

When, with a smile and a stride faster than would be expected for someone her apparent age, the witch-lady – whose name he _still_ didn't know, Lyons thought irritably – disappeared also, Lyons felt suddenly drained.

Up until this point, events had kept him too occupied for him to fully take in what had happened. But now he was back where they had so optimistically started out on their mission only that same morning. And back in a condition far removed from their last visit.

Two of the team were nearly entirely unmarked save for light bruises on their wrists; one had black markings – _moving _black markings – all over his arms and hands; two of them were dead.

And now the remaining three left alive had to go back home and explain just what exactly had happened on P4X-182 to cause this state of affairs. Lyons wasn't looking forward to the debriefing, or the oncoming mandatory sessions with shrinks. Nor, in fact, was he looking forward to trying to get on with life again with half his team gone, whether the surrounding circumstances had been his fault or not.

It was only when the gate opened with its usual fanfare that Lyons realised that he had entirely neglected to either order that it be dialled up, or to see it being dialled. It didn't matter, though.

They were going home regardless.

The living and the dead, they were all going home.

**_to be continued..._**


	3. Chapter 3

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing anyone recognises.**_

**A/N: So, this is the last part. Hope you enjoy.**

* * *

_**Acid Shadows**_

_**Part Three**_

Loud, obnoxious klaxons never signalled good news. They most especially never signalled good news when heralding an unexpected activation of the wormhole around which the activities of Stargate Command were centred. So the two generals of the United States Air Force that were overseeing events at the base were to some degree prepared for the coming of unfortunate – to word it mildly – news.

And it was clear, even at a glance, as their people stepped out of the wormhole, that the news was rather more than unfortunate. The state of the team was a far cry from that in which they had left Earth.

Hank felt his heart sink, his stomach knot itself into a fair representation of a noose. More of his people were dead, and he hadn't done anything to prevent it, and he _couldn't have done anything_ to prevent it. And Hank wasn't sure which was worse.

Standing next to him, General O'Neill didn't say anything. They both knew they were thinking the same thing anyway.

The frozen moment ended, and the SGC moved on. Within the hour, the whole of the base will know that they had lost people (_again_, Hank carefully didn't think). But now isn't the time to drop everything, to stop and mourn, because the world (_the galaxy_) moves on, and they have to try to move with it (_to keep up_).

* * *

Events of the recent past were a bit of a blur to Major Lyons, who had not been at the time concentrating on them clearly. There had been the cold of the wormhole, the gateroom, handing over his weapons. Just flashes, bits and pieces of the scenes making up his life. Landry saying something. The infirmary, post-mission check-up, making sure that none of them had anything hiding in their systems, to unexpectedly rear it s head and burn its way – _no._ Corridors.

And then there was the briefing room, and the conference table, and he had managed to (_tell the story,_ he thought, _because stories aren't real_) explain, to recount the events of the mission.

He hadn't stumbled (too much) over the words (no more than could be expected), mostly because he had been trying, desperately, to distance it all from him (it wasn't working, and he had wondered if he deserved that, for leading them and messing it up). But that was, he had gathered over the time he had worked here, okay, that he couldn't quite keep it out of his voice, okay that it affected his "professional demeanour", or whatever. Even if Landry didn't know what it was like, how it felt to lose one (more than one) of your team to what was out there, beyond the wormhole, General O'Neill did understand (and that was what counted, right?).

Lyons took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying not to be too obvious about it. _Enough. Concentrate, now._

Sitting at the head of the table, General O'Neill's eyes narrowed.

'Kid,' he said abruptly, drawing a glare from his clone, 'hands on the table.'

The death-glare continued, but the younger O'Neill pulled his hands from underneath the table, plonking them palm-down on the dark surface, pulling off a remarkably realistic impression of a sulking teenager.

Then again, by all accounts the General could be pretty childish himself at times; now he just rolled his eyes at the display his clone was putting on, before redirecting his gaze to the clone's hands, so obligingly placed in full view of all four men seated around the table. The backs and sides of his hands and fingers, along with part of his wrists – all that could be seen extending from his unrolled sleeves – were liberally covered in what looked almost like flickering black shadows.

Upon closer inspection – which all at the table embarked upon immediately – the "shadows" were in fact made up of black ink, moving in intricate, interwoven – almost Celtic – designs over his skin. It looked almost – not quite natural – but as though it was somehow meant to be there. But the ink...didn't look like ink, not like regular, mundane human tattoo-ink. It was darker, more...it looked, Lyons thought, almost as though the twisting shadows were not so much a _colour_ as they were the absence of light. They looked alive.

Under the stares of the older men, Jack shifted, pushing his left sleeve up towards his elbow, revealing as he did so that his palms were just as covered, and the designs – almost mesmerising in their movement – continued up past his forearms.

Lyons and Chapman had been sneaking glances at Jack's hands and arms all the way to the gate, unable to stop their wandering eyes, but the glimpses they had managed hadn't been in any way sufficient to see the detail. But however little the pair had previously seen, it was enough to render them at least partly immune to the lure of the shifting ink – or demon's blood, or whatever the natives had called it – that comprised the alien tattoos.

So it was made easier for the two soldiers to look away when they heard General O'Neill's voice; it was somewhat harder for Hank Landry to tear his near-unblinking gaze away to attend to the practical question put bluntly by his fellow general.

'How far up do they go?'

A fair question, Hank thought. The ink-stuff could have spread nearly anywhere, hidden beneath clothing.

'Up to my shoulders,' came the answer, and Hank couldn't help but feel peculiarly relieved.

And then he realised that it didn't really matter how far the stuff had spread where it couldn't be seen; it was where it _could_ be seen that was the problem. A pretty large problem, in fact, one that O'Neill – both of them – appeared to have grasped with ease.

It might have been possible to deny the alien origin of the tattoos, and pass them off as normal, no matter how much of the teen's body was covered in them; if only it weren't for the fact that the tattoos moved. No Earth-based tattoos moved, and the placement of the ink-stuff was just too obvious to have a hope of hiding it. Even if normal, Earth-style tattoos could be removed through some form of acid, Hank doubted that these would submit to such a treatment. They looked as though they were here to stay.

But if the patterning on Jack's skin existed where it could be seen, then equally Jack couldn't be allowed to be seen by the public – moving tattoos were a bit much for the general population to accept as normal, whatever else they had swallowed in terms of cover stories over the years. And somehow, Hank didn't think that Jack O'Neill would enjoy being cooped up as a result of – well, anything, really.

He had hardly allowed himself to be put in one place when the SGC had kicked him off to attend high school; Hank still didn't know exactly where the clone had disappeared to after rejecting that idea, but he also a faint suspicion he didn't want to know.

Plausible deniability did have its uses, occasionally.

Wherever it was the younger O'Neill went to live – and presumably, make a living – it was doubtful he would be able to get there without the backing – or at least not the active discouragement – of the Air Force. But it seemed that the clone had an answer to this problem, too; he really was determined not to have other people decide what would happen to him, wasn't he? Then again, no one really wants to be told what to do, how to live.

'Don't worry,' the kid said calmly, more or less casually. 'Apparently there's a way to hide them.'

And _that_ made everyone around the table sit up straighter. It appeared as though not a single one of them had been privy to _this_ bit of news before, not even the pair who had actually been on the planet.

'Care to explain?' General O'Neill asked, nearly as casually, complete with raised eyebrow. Almost.

The clone responded by staring into the distance, his eyes removing their focus from his immediate surroundings. And then, as though in response to his actions – and when Hank thought about it later, it would have been in _direct_ response to the clone's actions – the moving tattoos on his skin stilled, and then slowly faded from view.

The men stared at Jack's now-shadow-free hands and arms, surprised yet again. And why was it, again, that they even bothered formulating ideas about what the teen was going to do next when they were always, inevitably wrong? And then as they watched, Jack's eyes focused again on them, and the tattoos reappeared, moving slowly to begin with, and then speeding back up to their former glory.

'And are you going to be able to do that for more than a couple of seconds? Because if you can't make them disappear for longer, it won't help you in the slightest.'

At first, the only response that this achieved was a thoroughly disgusted look.

Then: 'It just takes practice.'

Lyons imagined that the teenager left an "apparently" off the end of that sentence, because really, the attention garnered by those freaky new tattoos was not the sort of attention due to a regularly-occurring phenomenon. But General O'Neill, who must have surely picked up any unsaid words, left the statement be, and moved on. It seemed that the subject of alien tattooing-inducing had been sufficiently dealt with for the present moment.

The younger O'Neill dropped out of the conversation, no longer subject to staring, and let the rest of them get on with the process of finishing up the debriefing, very possibly relying on his youthful appearance to get him out of actually having to participate. Lyons, acting more or less on default and pre-programmed responses, just as he has been since he came back through the gate, watched the kid fiddle absentmindedly with a pen. A few minutes later, the major realised that, firstly, the kid was putting up a good act of being bored out of his mind and not paying attention, but it was only an act; and that, secondly, General O'Neill had been fiddling with a pen in exactly the same way for at least the past five minutes.

It was at about that point that Major Lyons came to the conclusion that he should spend a little more time paying attention to what his superiors were saying, and less to their pen-twirling habits. But however much attention he had been paying events, he managed to make it out of the debriefing without collapsing in some way, which his subconscious had been strongly urging him to consider as the correct course of action. On the other hand, neither he nor Cochrane managed to escape without reminders (orders, really) to visit the resident shrink.

Those reminders were pushed, almost immediately after the aforementioned escape, to the hind-brain to take up near-permanent residence there. Lyons and Chapman had mutually and independently concocted, somewhere in the time between returning to base and leaving it again, a plan that included in no uncertain terms a night of becoming steadily and increasingly drunk, preferably in good company, though they didn't especially care where it happened.

It would be sometime later, after his lengthy and painful recovery from his resulting hangover that Lyons would realise that not once had anyone mentioned that the kid visit a shrink. That insight, however, at whatever speed it was or was not discarded, was far from Lyons' mind at the close of the debriefing.

* * *

There were times when Landry had a great and near-overwhelming urge to ask Walter what exactly was _in_ those betting pools he pretended not to know about. He never did, though – behaviour befitting a general and all that – but he did wonder. Just like he sometimes wondered what his teams left out of their reports – he knew they _did_ – but he didn't know what, or how much, or why. And that worried him.

He may not be as close to the people he commanded as General Hammond – or O'Neill for that matter – had been, but he found himself a good deal closer than he had been to others under his command in the past. And so he cared about them. And if he didn't know what was troubling them – especially those troubles resulting from off-world missions – then he couldn't do anything to try and help them and it didn't matter how subtly he tried.

It didn't usually enter his thoughts overmuch, this inability to _connect_ with the people under his command, not often beyond worrying moments in the middle of the night. But this lack of connection, which seemed so vital in the SGC, was far more apparent – apparent to himself if not to anyone else, and he hadn't _asked_ anyone else, for fear of the answer he may receive – when either General Hammond or, more commonly, General O'Neill, made a visit to the base. The current situation was no exception.

General O'Neill had left, unwillingly returning to the Pentagon, but the SGC had yet to forget this most recent of his visits. Hank couldn't quite find it in him to be jealous (if that was the right word, even), but it was a close-run thing. The task of suppression of envy was not helped, in this instance, by the continuing presence of O'Neill's clone.

The clone had become something of an object of fascination, in part due to the tattoos of moving darkness continuously twisting around his arms and hands, and in part due to his uncanny – and so far unexplained, though this had not prevented rumours – resemblance to General O'Neill. He had taken this attention surprisingly well, reacting with good humour to the obvious curiosity of the SGC, and quite clearly forming what could become friendships were they given enough time.

The teenage O'Neill was also, it became equally obvious, taking advantage of his time at the base to discover exactly what had been happening since he had last been there, blatantly ignoring any regulations that may have otherwise prevented him from doing so. Obeying orders to refrain from poking his nose into matters was, apparently, not high on O'Neill's list of priorities.

Then again, Hank didn't much begrudge him the opportunity to catch up on events. If nothing else, it kept the clone mostly out of Hank's hair whilst he was at the SGC.

* * *

Some days later, General Hank Landry was seated in his office, having been securely ensconced there since the early hours of the morning, and was somewhat half-heartedly occupied with the task of completing paperwork. It was only later that he realised he had been sub-consciously waiting for the other shoe to drop. And drop it surely did, brought to Hank's attention, once again, by Walter, who was probably by this point in his career at the SGC a fervent believer in the don't-shoot-the-messenger mentality.

Standing before Hank's desk, Walter didn't look especially apprehensive, but Hank had by this point known him just long enough to read certain aspects of his body language.

'Jack O'Neill is, uh, missing, sir. He isn't in his assigned quarters.'

'He left?' Hank asked, somewhat resigned. He should have seen this coming.

'Yes, sir,' Walter confirmed. 'He left this, sir,' he said, proffering a folded sheet of paper in outstretched hand.

General Landry took the paper.

'Do you want me to try and find where he went, sir?' Walter asked.

Hank genuinely considered the question for a moment, and then said 'No.' He was about to add more, considered an inquiry into whether anyone had seen the teenager leave (or had helped him do so), but then merely said, a touch distracted, 'Thank you, Walter.'

Walter lingered a moment, making sure he wasn't needed, and then left the General to it. Hank unfolded the single sheet of paper, and scanned the handwritten lines.

The note – it wasn't long enough to be called a letter – was brief and to the point.

_Hank;_

_Yeah, I left, got the hell out of Dodge, whatever. Things to do, places to be, you know the deal. Don't bother looking. The old man'll be able to find me if it's real important._

_Don't get migraines about tattoos and national security. I'm hardly gonna tell anyone. Not looking to get put up against a wall and shot, here._

_If anyone comes asking, I was never here._

_See you around._

It was unsigned, but the identity of the author was obvious. The note had quite clearly been written in his usual irreverent tone. Hank crumpled it up and tossed it onto his desk, feeling, he thought, rightfully irritated. He took a moment to fume at the clone's arrogance, at disappearing and then plainly assuming Hank would just _go along_ with it.

But then, it was entirely possible – reading between the lines – that the choice to leave hadn't been wholly up to the kid. And even if it had, Hank didn't know everything that was going on in the kid's life, that he felt he had to cover his tracks so thoroughly that even Walter hadn't been able to find out where he had been. There could easily be far more factors than those of which Hank knew.

General Landry ran over his options in his head, and then sighed. There was nothing he could do. The clone had said – written – as much himself. And – unsettling as the mention of "if anyone comes asking" was – the kid could take care of himself. Knowing Jack, he wouldn't appreciate it at all if Hank stuck his nose in O'Neill's business.

He picked the paper up from his desk, smoothed it out, and tore it into increasingly smaller pieces, and then put those pieces into his pocket for later disposal. There was no point leaving evidence hanging around when it had been written by someone who had never been here.

He sat back, reset his thoughts to the completion of paperwork, and waited for the next crisis.

And if Hank was being pessimistic, there, then it was no more than what life in the SGC seemed to almost require by at least _someone_ much of the time, and the rest of the universe would just have to learn to cope.

**-end-**


End file.
